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| US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears | ||
| 2008-10-11 | ||
| When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard. Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism." The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.
The regulations, which cover vaccines for everything from Dengue fever to the Ebola virus, have raised concern within the medical and scientific communities. Although they were quietly put in place more than a decade ago, they could now be more relevant because of recent concerns about bird flu. Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they were not even aware of the policies until contacted by The Associated Press last month and privately expressed alarm. They make "no scientific sense," said Peter Palese, chairman of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He said the bird flu vaccine, for example, can be used to contain outbreaks in poultry before they mutate to a form spread more easily between people. "The more vaccines out there, the better," he said. "It's a matter of protecting ourselves, really, so the bird flu virus doesn't take hold in these countries and spread." U.S. Commerce Assistant Secretary Christopher Wall declined to elaborate on the precise threat posed by vaccines for chickens infected with avian influenza, except to say there are "valid security concerns" that they "do not fall into the wrong hands." "Legitimate public health and scientific research is not adversely affected by these controls," he said. But some experts say the idea of using vaccines for bioweapons is far-fetched, and that in a health emergency, it is unclear how quickly authorities could cut through the current red tape to get the vaccines distributed. Under normal circumstances it would take at least six weeks to approve export licenses for any vaccine on the list, said Thomas Monath, who formerly headed a CIA advisory group on ways to counter biological attacks. All such decisions would follow negotiations at a "very high level" of government.
Kumanan Wilson, whose research at the University of Toronto focuses on policymaking in areas of health protection, said it would be ironic if the bird flu virus morphed into a more dangerous form in one of those countries. "That would pose a much graver threat to the public than the theoretical risk that the vaccine could be used for biological warfare," he said. The danger of biological warfare use depends on the specific virus or bacteria. But most experts agree that bird flu vaccines cannot be genetically altered to create weapons because they contain an inactivated virus that cannot be resuscitated. It's also unlikely they would be used to create a resistant strain of the virus as part of efforts to wreak havoc within global poultry stocks. If enemy states wanted to do that, they could make their own vaccines or turn to a less hostile country like China, said Ian Ramshaw, an expert on vaccine immunology and biosecurity at The Australian National University in Canberra. "I can think of no scientific reason how a terrorist organization could use such a vaccine for malicious intent," he said. "I personally think it's a rather silly attitude and the U.S. is probably going overboard as it has in the past with many of its bioterrorism initiatives." Meanwhile, bioethicists say limiting vaccines could also raise moral questions of whether some countries should be denied because of decisions based on foreign policy. | ||
| Posted by:lotp |
| #3 Oh, please. Just preventing the ability to vaccinate their bioweapons scientists against the agents that they will be starting with is enough to justify this policy. And if they have to send their bioweapons scientists out of the country or procure stocks from other places, then that gives everyone an opportunity to observe their behaviors. Contagious bioweapons deployed against their own people is an emerging doomsday device for this century's failed dictators. Making every step along the way hard for them is worthwhile. |
| Posted by: rammer 2008-10-11 23:39 |
| #2 I remember the 3 Rationales Rule from Risk. Which involved the Patrimony and Certain sekret behaviors best left unmentioned. Also involved Dragon Flies and exploding heads. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2008-10-11 13:10 |
| #1 This comes under the heading of the "3 rationales" rule, and important concept in modern strategic policy. That is, an extraordinary policy like this is never reliant on just a single major rationale, such as the one named, that providing vaccine could provide assistance to bioterrorism. A very good reason for this is because most people will assume that there are only single rationales for major policy decisions, for example, invading Iraq for "blood for oil". In retrospect, you see the naivete. However, if you have three very good rationales (as a minimum) for a major policy decision, even if the obvious one is negated, you still have two very good backup reasons. So the big question, since this assumed reason is obviously wrong, what are the other three reasons? |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-10-11 10:00 |